


The Hug

by trashbender



Series: Touch Starved [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Misunderstandings, Nervousness, Overthinking, Touch-Starved AU, Touch-Starved Keith, Universe Alteration, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 07:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11550516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashbender/pseuds/trashbender
Summary: They actually hug.





	The Hug

**Author's Note:**

> **Notice:** This is sort of part two of [Lowkey Flirting](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11528988), but it should be okay to read it as a stand-alone too. It's a few mentions of things from the two other parts, but it is nothing major, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem (you generally get the gist of it anyway).

## The Hug

After Keith asked Lance if he could hug him and didn't do so immediately, Lance figured it would be a surprise attack. Maybe Keith thought it would be funny to sneak up on him and attack him in a hug. Lance wasn't actually complaining when he imagined this scenario, but he wasn't sure how much he liked the idea of Keith scaring the shit out of him either.

So for the following week he might have been acting a little weird if he should say so himself. And maybe Keith picked this up. At least that's the only reasonable explanation Lance could come up with as to why Keith was retreating.

And it sucked, Lance conclude, because they had been doing so _great_. They had been holding hands and even flirting a little and then lately — nothing.

Keith hadn't even as much as tried to link their pinkies together in at least five days, and it hurt. Ever since Keith gave him that soft smile Lance knew he was screwed, but he hadn't thought... he hadn't really thought about it at all actually. And now he'd screwed it up. Without knowing what he'd actually done except acting a little different, but he was allowed to do so right? Or was he suddenly not allowed to have off days too?

He had probably overthought it, but once he started, he couldn't really stop. And once he got started, he went _all the way_.

Just like that first time, Lance found himself outside Keith's room, only he wasn't nervous this time. He was a man on a mission, determination his only emotion for the moment. Maybe a little hurt underneath, but mostly determination. He wasn't sure if it was determination to just get answers or to fix things, but he was determined to do _something_ , so he rolled with it.

He knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a reply, then he stepped inside and gave Keith his most serious expression.

Keith sat on his bed, knife in hand as usual. He stared up at Lance with a mixture of surprise and... something else. Lance wasn't entirely sure what that other thing was, but he didn't have time to worry about it. He had come here with a plan after all.

A plan that flew straight through the universe the moment he opened his mouth. Suddenly he just wanted to ask why; why Keith was avoiding him, why he was getting the cold shoulder, why they were drifting apart after doing so good.

"Lance?" Keith asked, and he sounded a little strained. Lance ignored the tugging in his heart.

He cleared his throat. "How ya' doing, buddy?"

Keith frowned. "Are you okay, Lance?"

"Me, I'm perfect. Super-duper. Why? Did you think I wasn't?" He was blabbing and he knew it. Lance cursed himself and tried to will his plan back into his mind, but it was lost. He just wanted to get his friend back, his maybe-something-more Keith.

"You've been acting strange," Keith muttered and glanced down at the stilled knife in his hands. Lance admired how Keith always spoke his mind. Sure, he wasn't always the best at reading the situation and filtering his words by that, but he never lied. He always said exactly what he thought.

Lance jerked his head to the side and stared at Keith's bare walls. "Oh," he said.

They both fell silent.

The silence between them hadn't been awkward in months now, and the fact that it was now, hurt more than Lance would have thought. He wanted to scream, to yell at Keith to just tell him what he did wrong. But he only stood there, silent, staring at the wall.

It was finally Keith who spoke up. "I'm sorry."

Lance almost got whiplash as he turned to look at Keith. The red paladin was still sitting on his bed, a little more hunched over himself, and he wasn't looking up. Lance wanted to ask what the hell he was saying sorry for, but his mouth wouldn't work.

"I know I read things wrong and I made things awkward between us. But I'm really sorry, Lance, I didn't mean to force myself onto you or something. You were just being kind and I overstepped our boundaries." Keith looked up, not at him but towards him, and gave a smile that wouldn't have fooled anyone. "Can we... is it possible to go back? Can we be friends again?"

Lance didn't know what to say or do. He was so confused and— and a little angry. Not at Keith, but just generally. Especially for not knowing what to do. He walked up to Keith, looming over him (not that Keith would ever be intimidated by something like that).

"What are you talking about?" Lance's loud voice did make Keith flinch. He looked away with a pained expression.

"Maybe not, maybe we can't after..." He stopped himself. Lance had noticed he did that a lot.

"Keith." At his name, Keith hung his head, almost as if he was defeated. His hands tightened around the knife. "Keith, look at me."

He did, and he could might as well have wrenched out his heart and stepped on it.

Keith was giving him the saddest smile he'd ever seen. He looked as if he was ready to be executed, as if he'd accepted some horrible fate and was waiting for the dreaded moment. Lance fell to his knees before him and almost grasped his hands, but managed to stop himself. He didn't know if Keith wanted to be touched right now.

"Keith," he breathed, all anger and frustration forgotten. "Keith, buddy, I think we've misunderstood each other somewhere here."

Keith blinked owlishly at him. "Huh?"

"You haven't made anything awkward. I mean, yeah, it was kinda a dick move to suddenly ignore and avoid me, but you've hardly made anything awkward. I mean, that was what I did, wasn't it? Make things awkward? With how I've been acting strange?"

Keith was frowning again. "That was because of me, though. Because I asked that stupid question."

"Stupid question?" Lance echoed.

Keith sighed (really just hissed a breath out between his teeth) and threw his arms out. "When I asked if I could hug you! You freaked out. I'm not _that_ stupid, you know. You were trying to be nice, but you could have said no, I would have understood, I would—"

"Wait, wait, wait," Lance interrupted, waving his hands in the air and frowning too. "You think I _didn't want to hug you_?"

Keith rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, knife forgotten on the bed. "It was kind of obvious, Lance."

"No, no, no," Lance yelped, horrified and relived all at the same time. Thank God all of this was a misunderstanding, but how the hell had Keith come to that conclusion? "I _really_ want to hug you," he deadpanned.

Keith only stared at him with this look that said that he didn't believe him for a second. Lance wanted to cry in frustration.

"I was _nervous_ ," Lance explained, a little exasperated.

Keith still didn't looked convinced. "Why?"

Lance wanted to slam his head against a wall. " _Because_ ," he said slowly and deliberately, " _someone I like asked to hug me and then didn't do a damn thing_."

He only realized what he had said a minute too late. His mouth hung open a little as he waited for Keith to reply. Said person was still frowning, slowly mulling over Lance's words. He died a little more every second that ticked by.

"You were nervous," Keith said eventually, slowly as if he was having a hard time understanding. "Because I asked if I could hug you, but didn't do it immediately?"

Lance nodded, teeth clamping down on his tongue before he could open his mouth and say something else humiliating.

"And then you acted weird because..." He faltered and frowned harder, teeth worrying his lip as he tried to understand what Lance was trying to tell him.

It was both adorable and infuriating.

"Because I didn't know when you would hug me!" Lance yelled, wanting so bad to just collapse on the floor and stay there, but he forced himself to sit upright and meet Keith's gaze. "I was looking forward to it, and because of that I ended up acting strange, because... because I wanted it to go well."

"Because you like me," Keith concluded and Lance really, truly considered just punching him in the face. It was astonishing how he managed to say these things with a straight face.

Lance took a deep breath and steeled himself. "Yes."

Keith blinked. One, two, three times, then he looked down at the floor between them. "I think I understand."

Well, Lance had nothing to say, which was a first. All kind of emotions were swirling inside him and he didn't know which one to grab on to. What the hell did he even mean he understood? What was it that he hadn't understood in the first place?

"Do you want to try hugging now?"

The question caught him so off guard that Lance nearly fell backwards. He met Keith's honest, open gaze and he suddenly couldn't breath. "N-now?"

Keith nodded.

What the hell, Lance thought, and opened his arms in invitation. He wasn't exactly sure what he expected, but he didn't expect for Keith to settle down in his lap and twine his arms around his neck. He really didn't expect the tiny little intake of breath as Keith's cheek pressed against his own. His arms naturally laid themselves around the small of his back and they were hugging.

It was more intimate than he'd expected. It wasn't really the way friends hugged, and it made something warm coil in Lance's stomach. He tightened his grip a little and basked in the tiny noise it made Keith make.

"This okay?" he mumbled into Keith's shoulder. Keith nodded and shuddered as their skin slid over each other.

Lance hummed and ran his hands ever so carefully up and down Keith's back. Keith hugged him tighter and everything seemed right.

Lance thought it was perfect. He wished he could stay in the moment forever and ever. Then Keith whispered, "I like you too, by the way."

He had been wrong. After Keith uttered those tiny, gentle words, the moment was really, truly perfect. And he wouldn't trade it away for anything in the entire universe.

**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N:** I guess this is part two of Lowkey Flirting? I couldn't leave it like that, you know, so this happened. Even more tooth-rotting fluff.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** I do not own Voltron: Legendary Defender or anything related to it.


End file.
